


Ginger Snaps (Out of It)

by SlowMercury



Category: Ginger Snaps (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Gen Fic, Misses Clause Challenge, Sisters, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 13:33:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5458265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlowMercury/pseuds/SlowMercury
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brigitte, between the disaster of the first film and the disaster of the second one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ginger Snaps (Out of It)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ozsaur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozsaur/gifts).



> I was so thrilled to be matched on _Ginger Snaps_! But I couldn't write you the story you asked for because I read [Girls Aren't Pets](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/1825313/1/Girls-Aren-t-Pets) over at FF.net a while ago and I knew I couldn't top it. I hope you like this instead. 
> 
> Happy Yuletide!
> 
> Beta'd by the lovely and lightning-quick [Saphrae](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Saphrae/pseuds/Saphrae).

_Brigitte pours through a heavy, poorly written book of fiction. The author claims to be basing his work on a first hand account of a wild beast which terrorized a frontier fortress in the 1800s. The book describes a great white creature, a monster, leading others of its kind to massacre everything in their path and reveling in the joy of the kill._

_The whole thing sounds suspiciously familiar. Brigitte starts making plans to find the author and grill him about his sources. Maybe she’ll learn something new._

_“It’s useless, you know,” Ginger’s voice comes from directly behind Brigitte.  “You’re not going to find anything this time, either.  Which you fucking well know already.  Why are you doing this to yourself?”_

_Brigitte doesn’t turn around._

 

The first time Brigitte saw Ginger, _after_ , she’d felt a flare of wild, incandescent joy. 

It was the day after the first full moon since... since _after_ , and Brigitte was washing her face in a pungent, dingy truck stop bathroom when she caught a glimpse in the mirror of someone lounging in the doorway behind her.  Brigitte straightened up immediately – Bailey Downs High had taught Brigitte well about the dangers of being cornered by bored classmates in bathrooms, and the last month on her own had only driven that lesson home – but what Brigitte saw when she focused on the mirror was Ginger, looking put out but _alive_ , oh merciful God, _alive_. 

Ginger was a werewolf when she’d died.  She was a werewolf, and she hadn’t been shot with a silver bullet.  The movies were right after all, it just took a while, an extra full moon.  But Ginger was back, was human, was _alive_.  She was here, and it would be the two of them again, united against life as they knew it.  Brigitte spun around, arms reaching for a rib-crushing hug.

Her hands passed right through the spot where her sister stood. 

Ginger hadn’t miraculously returned to life; it was just a hallucination.  Or a ghost, but a hallucination was more likely.  And Brigitte had to realize all over again, the knowledge like a punch to the gut every time, that Ginger really was dead.

“Real smooth, genius,” Brigitte’s dead sister mocked.  “What, cat got your tongue?  Nothing to say to your favorite person?”

“Ginger,” Brigitte choked out, always unable to resist responding to her sister, even if Ginger was probably a figment of her own imagination.  Or a ghost.  Brigitte closed her eyes, took a deep, slow breath, and repeated more calmly, “Ginger.  I’m sorry.”

“Damn right you’re sorry, you wuss,” Ginger scoffed.  Despite the harshness of her words, Ginger’s tone wasn’t entirely unkind.  Her face grew serious, and she added, “But that’s old news – you’ve got bigger problems now.”

“What are you talking about?” Brigitte asked.

In response, Ginger pointed over Brigitte’s shoulder into the truck stop’s dirty bathroom mirror.  Brigitte looked where Ginger’s finger indicated and then swore.

Yesterday, Brigitte’s arms had had a bruise and three parallel, inch-long scratches from shouldering her way through a boarded up window, as well as a few scattered, mostly healed scrapes from her month past fight with Ginger.  Today, the bruise was gone and the cuts and scrapes were healed flawlessly, leaving her skin scarless.

Brigitte finally had to admit to herself that she was in trouble.

 

_“Shit, B, you have no idea what you’re doing, do you?” Ginger says, and she actually sounds concerned._

 _“So?” Brigitte snarls, finally facing her sister.  “At least I’m not doing nothing!  I am going to_ beat _this.”_

_Ginger laughs.  “Sure you will.”_

 

Brigitte found herself haunting local libraries.  At first she didn’t dare stay in one place for too long, afraid that someone would make the connection between the teenager in a baggy coat and the sensational Bailey Downs murders.  Wherever she was, though, Brigitte made a point to read the _Downs Daily Chronicle_ online, both to stay informed about what the police knew and to keep tabs on what was happening at home.

The _Chronicle_ was much less informed about the murders than Brigitte expected. It took her almost a week to figure out why: Pamela had burned the house down, just as she’d promised she would, so the police never found Trina’s or Sam’s bodies.  In fact, Trina Sinclair was still listed as missing and there was some speculation that she’d run away with the local drug dealer, Samuel Byrne, who had vanished just two days after she did.  The bodies the police did have – the janitor’s and Mr. Wayne’s – were mauled so badly that the deaths were attributed to an escalation in the supposed wild animal attacks.  Brigitte and Ginger Fitzgerald’s disappearances went entirely unremarked.

Brigitte tried not to think about her mother coming home to a partially destroyed house, missing daughters, a dead body and a mysterious animal corpse in the basement.  Brigitte hoped her mother never figured out that “animal” was Ginger; Pam would be happier if she thought her girls had run away together.

After her first month away from home, Brigitte stopped checking the _Chronicle_.  She couldn’t afford to keep looking backwards when she wasn’t truly cured of her lycanthropy after all.  Besides, Ginger’s insubstantial visits helped with the loneliness and the completely unexpected homesickness, at least when Ginger’s presence didn’t make Brigitte crazy with guilt and suffocating grief. 

So Brigitte turned to research with an intensity she’d never before had for academics.  She studied werewolf mythology, medicine, botany and the aconitum family, history, infectious diseases... and none of it came any closer to explaining how to fix her. 

The first time she tried to distill Sam’s wolfsbane tincture from monkshood, Ginger watching silently from her perch on a nearby chair, it didn't go well.  Sam had made the whole process look easy, but it took Brigitte three attempts just to get a uniform liquid and another two to make a tincture that looked remotely like the ones Sam had created.  She kept careful notes, but nothing changed the fact that Brigitte had no experience with brewing drugs and even less idea what she was doing.  Sam had warned her that finding the right dosage would be a guess, and that there might be side effects.  He had warned her not to try it alone.

Brigitte had no choice.

Brigitte had used the monkshood drug before, the last dose that Sam ever made; it felt like ants crawling into her bloodstream and the smell of asphalt melting in the sun.  It had cleared her mind for the first time since Brigitte contracted lycanthropy, though, and it hadn’t done worse than make her vomit up her previous meal.  Even the vomiting might have been more because of the last thing Brigitte had eaten and less because of the drug.  In contrast, Brigitte’s version of the wolfsbane remedy felt like antifreeze sizzling in her veins and choking on tar.

“– _igitte!_   Breathe, Brigitte!”  Ginger’s voice shouted Brigitte back to consciousness. 

 Brigitte was lying on the floor.  How stupid.  When did that happen? she asked Ginger.

“You seized,” Ginger said.  “You hit your head on the table, collapsed to the floor and started choking on your tongue.  That shit can’t be healthy, B.”

“It’s fine,” Brigitte snapped defensively.  “Sam’s worked.  I just have to experiment some more to figure out how he did it.  This was just a first attempt, and I made it too strong.”

“Obviously,” Ginger muttered, rolling her eyes.  “How are you even going to tell if it’s working, anyway?  The physical changes were all internal right up until I grew a fucking tail, and it’s not like you can measure the mindfuckery aspects very accurately from the inside.  Although, pro tip: when you find yourself wanting to tear people apart and eat them, you have progressed to the next stage of being a werewolf.  But don’t worry – that’s when the fun really starts.  People are fucking delicious.”  Ginger smiled wickedly at Brigitte.  “I _know_ you know what I’m talking about.”

“I’m not going to eat people,” Brigitte slurred from her place on the floor.  “That’s disgusting.”

“Mm,” Ginger hummed thoughtfully.  “You’ll change your mind.”

Brigitte lay aching, too exhausted and pained to argue with Ginger again beyond a reflexive mumbled denial.

The two were silent a moment.

Brigitte’s bleary thoughts turned to her cuts and bruises, which disappeared the night of the full moon.  “I’ve got an idea for how to test if the drug is working,” she announced abruptly.  “I can cut myself before I dose on the monkshood and then track how long it takes to heal up.” 

“That sounds ridiculously melodramatic,” Ginger said.  “It’s brilliant; I love it.  Except for the part where you’re going to continue using an experimental, super-toxic drug which apparently causes seizures.  That part sucks.”

“It beats the alternative,” Brigitte said wearily.  “And after this first test, I’ve got at least some idea of how much is too much.”

“Whatever, it’s your life.  If you want to fucking poison yourself, don’t let me stop you.  Just don’t come crying to me when you destroy your liver or die or something.”

“I won’t,” Brigitte replied, and picked herself up onto shaky feet to head back to the table and get back to work.

 

_“Ginger...  This one could be it.  I just have to keep looking.”_

_“That’s what you said about the last one,” Ginger replies.  “But you need higher doses of monkshood now, and you’re healing faster.  You’re running out of time.”_

_“Well I’m not done yet,” Brigitte says._

 

Even though the monkshood experiment seemed like it was going well, Brigitte kept looking for other solutions, other cures. So when she ran across an advertisement for a New Age witch called Madam Iris Oculus who promised to “physically, spiritually and magically purge your body of negative influences,” Brigitte followed up on it. 

Madam Oculus’s shop was located on a busy street in downtown Ottawa.  Something about the city made Brigitte uneasy – perhaps because it was the first time she’d been around so many people at once since she’d left Bailey Downs – but the shop seemed nice enough.  It was a solid brick building with lacy white curtains, a door painted purple, and a discreet sign.  The overall atmosphere was one of charming eccentricity.

Ginger was not impressed.  “This woo-woo bullshit is a steaming pile of crap.  Magic’s not real, B.”

“How would you know?” Brigitte retorted.  “You’re dead.”

“Yeah, and whose fault is that?  Being dead doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”  Ginger sniffed condescendingly.  “Stick to science, that’s at least got a chance of being helpful.”

Brigitte shrugged awkwardly and ducked into the shop.  She wasn’t willing to dismiss magic out of hand anymore.  Werewolves were real.  Brigitte regularly saw her dead sister, who might or might not be a hallucination or ghost.  Why not witches?

Inside, a plump, animated woman in a peasant skirt looked up at the sound of the shop bell.  Brigitte guessed this was Madam Iris Oculus.

“Oh, you poor dear!” Madam Oculus exclaimed.  “You’re simply drowning in negativity!  You were right to come to me, this is an emergency.  Come right to the back, we’ll get started right away.”

The back room was a wealth of spicy incense smells and a circle of unlit candles, which Madam Oculus hurriedly reignited.  Warily, Brigitte followed Madam Oculus’s hand-waved instruction and sat down in a chair.

“Today is just the preliminary work,” Madam Oculus explained.  “With as much bad energy as you’re carrying, you’ll have to come back every day for at least a week to be fully cleansed.”

“Okay,” Brigitte said.  “How does this work?  And how expensive is it?  I don’t exactly have a lot of money.”

For the first time, Madam Oculus paused in her bustling movements.  “Don’t worry about money, dear,” she said.  “You can assist me with the shop instead.  You need help, and I’m not going to turn you away.”

Brigitte’s eyes watered at the unexpected kindness, the first she could remember receiving in a long, long time.  “Thanks,” she said softly, once she got herself back under control.

Madam Oculus smiled at her.  “No problem, honey.”

They planned out a routine for the next few days.  Brigitte would help Madam Oculus in the mornings, and in the afternoons they would work on meditation and purging negative influences.  Brigitte wasn’t sure that meditating to get in touch with her inner desires was the best idea, since right now Brigitte’s inner desires chiefly focused on killing things, but purging negative influences sounded promising and it was certainly worth a try.

When Brigitte stepped back outside, though, her jitters at being in a city again returned even more strongly.  Ginger appeared on the curb, and Brigitte realized belatedly that her sister hadn’t followed her into the shop.  They set out on foot for Brigitte’s motel, and after about ten minutes’ walk, Brigitte’s jitters turned into skin-tingling creeps.

“What’s wrong?” Brigitte asked.

“Can’t you tell?” Ginger replied.  “You’re being watched.”

And just like that, Brigitte could feel it.  Her edginess at the city crowds solidified into something more sinister, and her senses stretched towards a cross street where she _knew_ something horrible lurked.

“What is that?” she whispered hoarsely.

“Your future boyfriend,” Ginger said.  When Brigitte glared, Ginger grinned at her and flickered out of existence. 

Brigitte walked faster, never breaking into a run, because all of Brigitte’s jangling animal instincts insisted that to run was to be prey.  Before she could begin to really panic, a bus pulled up to a nearby stop.  Brigitte got on without even checking its destination.

That night, Brigitte hardly slept, pacing from one side of her motel room to the other and listening for the sound of her fellow werewolf approaching.  She managed to relax a little around dawn, but she was glad when the new day began and gave her the excuse to head back to Madam Oculus’s.

She was far less glad when she got there.

“Huh,” Ginger said, glancing into the wreckage of Madam Oculus’s shop.  “Guess your boyfriend’s the jealous type.”  The cheerful purple door hung off its hinges, and the white lacy curtains were splattered in brown red splotches.  Gawkers began to congregate, and Brigitte heard a faint siren starting to head their way.  She smelled the stench of blood in the air, thick and repugnant and _inviting_. 

For a moment, Brigitte was sure that it was Madam Oculus’s blood, the blood of the first person who’d been kind to her since the Bailey Downs High janitor.  Then Brigitte’s eyes picked out a severed hand in the wreckage of the doorway, and the skin was the wrong color for Madam Oculus.  Brigitte couldn’t help the wave of relief that hit her.  Someone had died, yes, but it wasn’t her friend.

“Aw, B, look!  He left you a present,” Ginger crooned.

Eventually, Brigitte caught sight of Madam Oculus on the far edge of the gathering crowd.  Madam Oculus looked devastated and frail, but she seemed to sense Brigitte’s gaze on her, because she straightened up, glared and shouted something.  Brigitte was too far away to hear, but somehow she knew what Madam Oculus said: _This is your fault.  You brought this down on us.  Get out of my sight_.

Brigitte fled.

When she finally stopped running, Brigitte was back at her motel.  She got noisily sick in the bathroom, then took a moment to shake and let the adrenaline fade.  She collected her clothes and her vials of monkshood, stole the motel soaps, and packed her books into her bag.

 

_“This lead won’t pan out, either,” Ginger predicts._

_It doesn’t._

_Brigitte doesn’t give up._


End file.
